Bipartisan kids’ internet safety legislation is one step closer to reality as key House members announced an agreement including privacy and data broker provisions and indicated they hope to bring the bill to a suspension vote on the House floor. House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and ranking member Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., said Monday they’d come to a deal on legislation that advanced out of the committee in March. The revised bill would incorporate data privacy protections for children and teens and only preempt conflicting state laws, responding to Democratic concerns. On the release of the bill text, Guthrie and Pallone praised the bipartisan nature of the revised package, and Pallone said he looks “forward to working with Chairman Guthrie to bring this package to the House floor for a vote soon.” Bringing the bill to the floor under suspension of the rules would require two-thirds of those voting to pass, meaning it would need significant bipartisan support. In a joint statement announcing the agreement, Guthrie and Pallone said they “have now found common ground on policies to significantly improve the digital environment for kids.” “Through empowering parents, establishing safety as a default, strengthening privacy for children and teens, increasing transparency around data brokers, and holding Big Tech accountable, the KIDS Act delivers the 21st century protections parents have demanded and our kids deserve.” The bill, formally titled the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, moved out of committee with only Republican support, after lawmakers combined 12 measures to create the online safety package. As advanced by the committee, the bill would set new requirements for parental controls and require certain online platforms to put policies in place to address harms to kids online. It has sections to address direct and ephemeral messaging services, online gaming and artificial intelligence chatbots. Preemption was previously a sticking point for committee Democrats, who argued that the bill would knock out too many state laws without putting in place a sufficient federal standard. The new version would allow states to regulate beyond the federal standard on issues the bill covers. The new version also includes new privacy protections and would create a data broker registry. It incorporates revised legislation to update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The text issued Monday updates the knowledge standard, taking a third path not used by the current House or Senate’s so-called COPPA 2.0 bills. The data privacy provision applies to companies that have actual knowledge or should have known a user is a child or teen. The bill would extend COPPA’s protections to users as old as 17, beyond current law that goes up to 13. The new knowledge standard comes after the committee deferred action on the Republican-led COPPA 2.0 bill in March, in the wake of the Senate approving its own version. At the time, Guthrie said that bipartisan conversations were continuing and the deferral was due to progress being made toward an agreement. The Senate bill would revise the original requirement that companies have “actual knowledge” that a user is a child before they’re required to get parental consent for disclosing the user’s data. The new language would change that standard to “actual knowledge or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances.” The House bill would instead create a tiered system in which smaller companies would be governed by the “actual knowledge” standard and larger platforms would need parental consent if they “willfully disregarded information that would lead a reasonable and prudent person to determine that a user is a child or teen.” Democrats had said they thought the tiered system was too weak. The revised bill would require data brokers to register with the Federal Trade Commission, including recording what type of data the broker sells and descriptions of any recent data breach incidents. The FTC could charge a registration fee of at least $22,500 annually.
